It felt like it was 1965, there in Gabe's garage.
It
was one of the few times in my life as a teenager where I could forget
about the world outside -- where all of us could forget about the world
outside; and for a few brief hours, live an idyllic life in the
American 60's. It felt like 1965, never mind that Sean's '69
Camaro and my '66 Mustang Fastback were parked outside in his driveway,
with Smokey Robinson's
"
Tracks of my tears" playing on the radio in the
garage.
People say I'm the life of the party
Because I tell a joke or two
Although I might be laughing loud and hearty
Deep inside I'm blue
So take a good look at my face
You'll see my smile looks out of place
If you look closer, it's easy to trace
The tracks of my tears..
His entire
garage was decorated as if it were still the sixties, with period
electrical appliances as well. There was a black-and-white TV
in there in a wooden cabinet, and a monaural audio system.
If we closed the garage door, there was nothing in that space that
would indicate that it wasn't the sixties.
So there we were, the four of us -- me, Gabe, Sean and Katie; three Irish and an odd Asian guy, in our oil-stained jeans and white undershirt tees, working on
restoring Gabe's '61 Thunderbird, a monstrous white boat on wheels with
a convertible top that we affectionately named "
Moby" after Melville's
famous white whale. I remember Katie then, in a cute
knee-length baby-blue poodle skirt and a white blouse and my
blue-and-white letterman's jacket around her shoulders as she sat and
hung out with us.
It was a fun time I look back on
fondly.
It was never so innocent as it was back
then. It seemed that once Katie and I started our way down
the bad path, nothing was ever the same -- not even Gabe's
garage. After we restored Moby, it became less about
restoration and more about performance. We started building
Sean's Camaro and my Mustang for running the quarter-mile
dragstrip. It became a thing where we weren't rebuilding his
327, but now we were dropping in a big-block 454 for serious
muscle.
There are times that I wish I could return
to those times. The times before life got complicated like
this. When I enjoyed restoring a car just because I
enjoyed restoring things that were damaged, back to their original
condition; instead of trying to "improve" them by turning the cars into
race-cars.
*****
In a way, as I look back on my life, that's what everything had become -- a quest to improve everything; as if whatever thing it was wasn't good enough.
It was like that with women too. Like with cars, I wanted new-and-improved. Yank out the exhaust manifold and pipes. Install free-flowing headers. Remove intake system and port-and-polish. Bore-and-stroke out the bottom end. Bigger carburetors. And if that wasn't enough, I'd move onto the next better thing.
It was like that with women too.I sold my '66 Mustang Fastback years ago.
And through several more cars, I ended up with a Porsche, a Mercedes-Benz, a Ducati, and a neo-iconic Twinturbo Supra. I've seen the shallow end of a sub-10-second quarter mile. I've seen the far side of 200 miles per hour. I know what it feels like to have 1,000 horsepower pushing my eyeballs into the back of my head, going from 0 to 300km/h in 30 seconds.
But in the end, I still dream of driving my old '66 Mustang.
If I had kept her, and restored her, and maintained her, she would be priceless and beloved right now.
It was like that with women too.*****
The way a guy is with his car tells a lot about the way he is with his women.
A guy who tends to leave his car in a state of disrepair and suffering from poor maintenance is the kind of guy who will tend to leave his woman the same way. A guy who can care for his car is also the kind of who has the capacity to care for his woman. Of course it's not as simple as that, but if somebody has the capacity to be passionate and have care for one thing that's important to him; it shows that he can do the same for something even more important.
Guys with nice cars tend to like status girlfriends. The pretty ones that people look at and ooh-and-ahh at, and feel envious for. Look at the guys who drive Maseratis -- they almost invariably have some prettied-up, haute couture, physically stunning woman with them. And like the Maserati, the women tend to be just as temperamental.
Look at the guys with fast cars. They tend to like fast women.
Look at the guys with practical, reliable cars -- they tend to have similar practical, reliable girlfriends. I'd go so far as to say that if a guy drives a Toyota Camry, his girlfriend is also the female equivalent of a Toyota Camry. Same goes for guys who drive pickup trucks. Or Nissan XTerras. Or BMW 540s. And if a guy doesn't have a girlfriend, the kind of car he drives tells a lot about the kind of girl he's looking for.
I drive a Toyota Corolla most of the time nowadays.
I like her. I've named her Corrie. She's small, white, and cute, she's good to me, she's not fussy and she's good on gas. There's a few quirks to her, but I love them. She doesn't have a tachometer, so there's no indicator of her engine speed -- but I'm an experienced enough race-driver to be able to feel that without having a gauge to tell me. She's not fast. She shakes a little when I get up to speed. But I don't need to drive fast anymore anyway. I used to speed a lot, but I could drive at the speed-limit all day long these days.
The important thing is that she's reliable, and that she's solid. She's indispensable to me, day-in and day-out; and that I give her no less the same care and love as I did my other cars -- even more so, because I realize her true value; and I'm no less proud driving her around town than I was in the Porsche, or the Mercedes-Benz, or even the Twinturbo Supra.
This time, I'm going to keep her, and maintain her.
I'm done with the next new thing. The next model. Toyotas will last forever if you keep them maintained. My Supra has over 150,000 miles on her now. Corrie will double that and pass it if I had my way. I made that mistake fifteen years ago with my '66 Mustang Fastback, selling her for the next new thing when I should have just restored her and kept her.
I made that mistake with Katie too.
I think of Katie, hanging out with me while we worked on
Moby in Gabe's garage. I think of her, as we danced together on our hill above the city lights for the first time. I think of her, the very first time she leaned over to me from her desk in 7th grade, and I wish I took care of her the right way and kept her. I'm not going to make that same mistake again.
This time, I'm going to do this right.
